Raven of Misfortune
by Osmodion
Summary: Ravenclaw!Harry discovers that the search for knowledge is sometimes a lonely quest, and a corrupting one, too. Knowledge is power, after all. Neville-as-BWL, Grey!Harry, occasional ExistencialCrisis!Harry, no pairings as of yet
1. Chapter 1

I really should not be starting this, but the idea just got stuck.

Disclaimer: If I owned the Harry Potter series, it would have never been finished.

* * *

Once upon a time there was a young boy named Harry. He lived a normal, mundane life with his Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and cousin Dudley. Nobody in his family really liked him, and nobody in his family ever comforted or enjoyed being with him, but Harry supposed that it was alright.

He wasn't sure why nobody really liked him though. That thought made him a bit sad at times.

Usually, Aunt Petunia would send him out to work in the gardens, so that she and Uncle Vernon wouldn't have to see him (Harry never realized this until his 4th year). It wasn't so bad. He was a quiet kid who would amuse himself by playing with the weeds. He'd pretend his rake was a laser gun and mow down the saplings and dandelions and onion grasses like the main characters in sci-fi books.

Harry always like reading sci-fi books, ever since Aunt Petunia decided to bring him to the library and discovered that Harry could keep himself occupied for hours, alone, in the cupboard, with a book. Aunt Petunia had tried to give him stories of knights slaying dragons, at first, but those were boring.

Unbeknown to Harry, Aunt Petunia sometimes felt uncomfortable with the way Harry was so silent and indifferent to his isolation. Weren't neglected children supposed to be needy? She supposed that Harry was shy and introverted, a bit like his mother.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia always told Harry about his no-good parents. They certainly didn't want Harry thinking that he was better than them simply because he had those freaky powers. Aunt Petunia shuddered to think of how the boy could harm them, ruin them.

As for Harry, he didn't think he was special. In fact, he didn't think too hard about anything. Just simply daydreamed day in and day out about fantastic worlds he'd create in his imagination while he was weeding or locked up. He hated cooking, though.

Harry hated cooking because it forced him out of his daydreams. Uncle Vernon would always whip him with his belt if he burnt something, and he's done that too many times to count.

He used to hate Dudley, too, with an even greater loathing than he did with cooking, because Dudley would hurt him and laugh. Even Uncle Vernon didn't laugh at him when Harry was punished, and he only punished Harry with reason. He wouldn't just hit Harry for fun.

But then, one day, Harry stopped hating Dudley. It was the third day of third grade, and Mrs. Coleman had just returned their math worksheets. His paper had been decorated with a smiling butterfly sticker and an A+ at the top. Feeling especially cheerful, Harry had just taken out his old orange folder to store his paper when he spied Dudley's grade.

Dudley looked like he was going to cry. He'd gotten a four out of ten on basic multiplication problems.

After quickly scanning other student's sheets, he realized that Dudley had gotten the lowest score, and, at that moment, he couldn't help but pity Dudley. Suddenly, his old anger vanished, and in place of that came a type of nothingness. He shivered. It felt…a little…funny to know that Dudley was an idiot.

After they'd gotten home, though, Harry had been yelled at for scoring higher than Dudley. As Uncle Vernon, in his great sputtering rage, backhanded him once, Harry couldn't find it in himself to hate Dudley, who was sobbing, face puckered with pain and hate. Harry would probably hate himself a little bit, too, if Mrs. Coleman hadn't given him a smiling sticker. If he had been the only one without a smiling face on his page.

After that, Aunt Petunia got Dudley a tutor.

From then on, Harry wasn't allowed to score very high, but he wasn't allowed to turn in blank pages, either. At the end of fourth grade, Dudley had taken to waving Harry's grades and making fun of them. Mrs. Coleman would occasionally smile at him, though, and in his heart he pretended that she knew it was all a farce, and that she'd been storing up his stickers in her big filing cabinet.

It was his biggest wish. On the last day of school, he stayed in a recess, hoping that today would be the day Mrs. Coleman would reveal all the stickers that she'd kept for him. He felt a little sick as sat stock-still in his chair, listening to Dudley and the others play outside. He wouldn't look in her direction.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mrs. Coleman walked up to him and asked him if anything was wrong. Harry felt his heart thudding in his chest, and blood rushing in his ears. He didn't want to ask her though, because that would be embarrassing, but, in his feverish desire, he wholly believed that she had them.

She was going to give them to him. She was reaching into her bag to get his stickers out. He clenched and unclench his fists, hands clammy.

It was a tissue.

"Why?" he asked, both surprised and disappointed at the same time. There was a part of him, deep down inside, that said, it's over. There were no stickers. But most of him believed that there was still a chance, that maybe she knew because she'd always smiled at him when he left her classroom.

"You're crying, Harry," she told him gently. "Is there anything you need to talk to me about?"

"Do—" his throat caught, but he pressed on. "Do you—have my stickers?" he whispered, embarrassed and frightened at the same time.

"What?" she asked, confused. "I didn't hear that last part."

He regretted this. It was humiliating, but he forced himself to say "my stickers."

"Oh," she answered, surprised. "You want a sticker? I'm sure I have a few left over. You can chose any that you'd like."

Harry nodded, but he felt the tears come faster. Without any really feeling, he followed her to her desk and chose a sticker, almost ripping it in half as he took it off. It was a yellow smiley face.

"Thanks," he muttered. She beamed at him, and hugged him. "Now you run off to recess and have some fun with your friends."

As Harry walked out of the classroom, he felt a bit like his heart was twisting itself, kind of like how he wrung out the wash sometimes. He put the sticker on the back of his hand and ran to the bathroom to dry his tears and make himself look normal.

Later, on the ride home, Harry couldn't remember why he'd wanted a sticker so badly in the first place. It was all in all, an extremely embarrassing memory.

After another summer of normalcy, his Hogwarts letter came.

Uncle Vernon and Dudley had gone to spend some time together bowling and doing other stuff at the local fair. Aunt Petunia was upstairs, looking over furniture catalogs, and she had permitted Harry to stay outside of his cupboard for the day. Harry had been reading his science fiction books again, when he suddenly heard a tapping on the window pane. At first, he wasn't sure if he had imaged the great, big white owl hovering near the living room window.

Then he'd ran over to get a closer look at it. It wasn't every day that someone got to see something so cool as an owl in the daylight. Carefully, he touched the windowpane with his fingertips and admired the owl. It looked super clean and pretty.

The owl hooted, almost angrily, and rapped the glass again. Harry jerked back his fingers, realizing the consequences of having a huge, powerful owl near breakable glass. Aunt Petunia would never let him forget about this freaky incident.

He waved his arms frantically, trying to scare off the creature. "Shoo!" he whispered harshly. "Shoo!"

The owl rapped on the window some more with an irritated look. It waved its talons at him, and for a second, Harry thought the owl was saying hi. But then he noticed the parchment that was tied to one claw.

His curiosity getting the better of him, he opened the door a creak and stuck his head out. Immediately, the owl rammed into him and the two crashed into one of the potted flowers. Sounds of ceramic shattering and muffled yells were heard, and Harry knew with dread that Aunt Petunia would be downstairs very, very soon.

"You stupid owl!" he cried, yanking off the piece of paper and shoving it into his pants pocket. He didn't even care if it got crumpled. The owl glared at him before it flew away dismissively.

"WHAT'S GOING ON DOWN THERE?" Aunt Petunia shrieked, and Harry closed his eyes.

Harry was forced to stay into his cupboard for the next two days because of the owl incident. Nobody would have believed him if he told them that a giant owl with a message had knocked him over. Or even worse, they'd think he was doing something freaky, again. Harry grumbled. The freaky things always came to him, not the other way around.

Luckily, this provided the perfect chance for him to inspect the letter. It was addressed to him, and gave an extremely accurate address, so much that Harry felt very uncomfortable opening it. Aunt Petunia had once called Mrs. Figgs, their next door neighbor, a stalker, because she was always observing their house and had coincidentally met them on two of their entire family trips. Mrs. Figg would never send him a letter, though, and Harry couldn't for the life of him think of anyone else who would be interested.

The letter itself was made from the same yellowy parchment of the letter, and the calligraphy was quite beautiful. It went somewhere along the lines of "Hello, Mr. Potter, we are crazy wackos who are trying to prank you."

He'd tossed it into his closet, but he couldn't shake off the feeling that it meant something. It was a very elaborate prank, Harry reasoned, and focused on a very insignificant person. For a split second he thought maybe he should show it to Aunt Petunia and ask her what it was, but he discarded the idea. It would just be looking for trouble.

The next day, more letters came, and Uncle Vernon shook in fury. Aunt Petunia paled as she caught sight of the letter, and Harry was locked in his cupboard, again. Dudley was upset that Harry was the center of attention.

All throughout the day, Harry could hear Uncle Vernon raving about freakishness this and freakishness that. If Uncle Vernon was so angry, and if it was about freakishness, then maybe it wasn't a joke…

Harry rummaged around his school supplies for a pen. He was thankful that Uncle Vernon was too daft to believe that he had already received a letter, but unfortunately for him, Aunt Petunia was not as stupid. She remembered the cracked flower pot and the scratches on skin.

She refused to let Harry out to send his letter, and she took away all his pens and markers and pencils. Harry glared at her as she snooped through his stuff, undoubtedly trying to find the missing letter and his unsent response. As if she could deter him from going to Hogwarts. He'd memorized the address, and they'd be fighting him forever if they tried to make him stay.

Soon, Harry realized that he had underestimated how much his Aunt and Uncle hated magic. Hogwarts sent two new letters every day, and soon, Uncle Vernon moved them out to an abandoned camp in what seemed to actually be the middle of nowhere. There was no electricity, no plumbing, and no inhabitants nearby. They stayed there for a month, and Harry started to get nervous. The Hogwarts curriculum had already started, and what if they didn't allow him to enroll now?

After enduring another week of hunter-gatherer life, Aunt Petunia finally snapped. They were promptly moved back to civilization and Uncle Vernon gave Harry his most thorough thrashing ever.

"You'll be getting one even worse if you try to go to that school of freaks," he promised.

He did anyways. He wasn't sure if this would play out just like the stickers and Mrs. Coleman thing had, but after a week of waiting and pacing and high tensions, he was ready to give up.

He'd go to Stonewall, and work hard, he promised himself. Even if Uncle Vernon beat him. Especially if he did. And then when he was a legal adult, he'd run away from home, and never come back. He'd try to get a college scholarship and show everyone, show Vernon, show Petunia, show Dudley, show Mrs. Coleman, show that dratted Dumbledore…

But first, he'd get revenge on Vernon. Today they were expecting Vernon's boss for dinner, and Harry had been ordered to stay in his cupboard for the entire dinner and be absolutely silent. Well, guess what? If he was called a freak, then he'd do something freaky and ruin it. He didn't care about being beat later, because blows would never hurt Harry as much as losing the promotion would to Vernon. He didn't even understand why his "family" had taken him in.

Harry sniffed and dried his tears as the doorbell rang.

Aunt Petunia rushed downstairs and flatten her hair in the mirror before opening the door with an exclamation of "It's so good to see you, Mr. Croft!"

Then, the words died in her throat, and her face turned ugly.

"Vernon!" she yelled in a panicky voice. "There's a freak here! Get your gun!"

"WHAT?" boomed a voice. "I'm here to pick up uh…" he shuffled through some papers. "One Harry James Potter!"

"Oh no you don't!" she cried and ran over to Harry, shoveling him into the cupboard. "We're not going to let you having him and turn him into one of your freaks! He'll grow up to be an upstanding citizen!"

To Aunt Petunia's surprise, Harry ran into the cupboard, and she locked it behind him. She hadn't realized yet that Harry was starting to pack his things into his backpack. Clothes, papers, books, pens…he paused when he saw his yellow smiley sticker on the wall, and decided to peel that off and take it anyways. He realized his toothbrush was upstairs, but he'd give up a toothbrush for a chance to go to magic school. Once finished, he jiggled the latch, but it wouldn't budge. He pounded on the locked door. "Let me out!"

Suddenly, he heard a gun go off. He collapsed onto his bed, shocked speechless. They'd…they'd actually shot him…

His hopes and dreams…

Abruptly, his door flew off his hinges, and a large man with a bushy beard and friendly eyes peered down at him. "Are you Harry Potter?" he asked, then nodded to himself. "I reckon you are. C'mon Harry!"

Numbly, Harry followed him.

They ran out of there into the streets, and, before he knew it, he was picked up and put in a motorbike seat. They raced down the driveway, and Harry finally laughed as he felt them pick up speed and soar into the air. He looked down the small houses, and the tiny, insignificant Vernon and Petunia and Dudley.

And then the most wonderful thing happened. The Crofts car drove up, and a very confused Mr. Croft walked out. Harry laughed again, and turned back to face the sunset with the softest smile on his young face.

He was free.

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What do you think? I'm at a bit of a writer's block for what should happen next, but hopefully that'll resolve itself.


	2. Chapter 2

Along the ride, Harry learned that the name of his companion and by all rights, savior, was Mr. Hagrid. Mr. Hagrid was a half-giant, and he seemed rather uncomfortable talking about it because apparently having a giant as a mother was bad. They switched to talking about Hogwarts instead, and Mr. Hagrid seemed enamored by the school.

There were four houses at the school, called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. The brave heroes went to Gryffindor, the loyal and hardworking to Hufflepuff, the smart to Ravenclaw, and the bad wizards to Slytherin. Harry's own parents had gone to Gryffindor.

He had so many questions to ask. What were they like? How did you know them? Why did they die in a car crash? Were they really worthless? What did they do? And then questions about the houses like, Why were there bad wizards in a school? What was school like? Would he know enough? How much did it cost?

And then those questions lead to some darker musings like, "what if he failed school?" "where would he get money for tuition?" and "would he be sent back?"

Mr. Hagrid tried to assure him that the man called Headmaster Dumbledore would help him as much as he could, and that Harry would undoubtedly be a quick learner like his parents. When he inquired more about his parents, Mr. Hagrid gained that panicky look of a cornered dog and dodged around the questions. Harry let him.

As for supplies, Mr. Hagrid simply guffawed at his anxiousness and tossed him a plain black cloak, which Harry promptly fastened over his "muggle" clothing. He had been so grateful and delighted to learn that all his equipment this year would be paid by Hogwarts, as compensation for finding him so late.

"All yer supplies will be comin' from Diagon Alley," Mr. Hagrid huffed as he pointed his umbrella at his motorbike and waved it around. Soon, it shrunk, as Harry discovered from a casual peek into Mr. Hagrid's bag, to the size of a toy car.

They wandered into a deserted old alleyway and stopped in front of some bricks. The narrow route was half-shadowed and eerily silent save for the _thump-thump_ of Mr. Hagrid's boots and the shuffle of Harry's sneakers.

"Here we are, Harry," said Mr. Hagrid, and started to tap out pattern along the bricks. First, the third brick above the cracked one, then two bricks right, four down, twice on the one diagonal, and finishing with a brick one to the left and right of the original one. He played connect-the-bricks while Hagrid flicked them, and was excited to see them shake and sink in after the sequence.

Sunlight and the happy burble of voices filled his senses.

Recklessly, he ran into the busy and brightly-lit courtyard with the elation and wonder of an adventurer upon a new world. The world was large and filled with things he couldn't yet comprehend or ever had imagined. He saw so many acts of magic—picking up dropped things ("_accio_, napkin!"), wiping the tables ("_tergeo_, table!"). He saw two children run around with broomsticks, people disappearing, a boy and girl sharing an ice cream, and customers buying books. People, young and old, big and small, jumped and called and jeered and laughed and smiled. Owls, some spotted and some pure white, flew overhead with flashes of ribbon and clutches of paper.*

"C'mon, Harry!" Mr. Hagrid gestured to a quaint little store sporting "Madame Malkin's Robes for All Occasions" in large flourishes on a sign. He followed numbly and gaped unashamedly at everything.

"Bit busy here today," Mr. Hagrid apologized. "People and their kids are all out for winter holidays."

Harry had just been introduced to and abandoned, he thought sourly, to Madame Malkins, who was now fussing over him and his thin face and scrawny arms and floppy, messy hair until Harry was thoroughly pissed. He swatted at the magical measuring stick, which had entertained him for the first five minutes and then quickly lost its appeal once he discovered that it wanted measured _everything_.

"Harry, dearie, do tell me about all the goodies you got for Christmas!"

Furrowing his eyebrows, he asked "Christmas? I thought that, before, witches were burned because people thought they were unholy."

Madame Malkins stopped her fussing and looked slightly baffled by this. Harry felt like he'd accidentally said something wrong, and he grew increasingly uncomfortable and wished that they could talk about something else. He was extremely gratified when Madame Malkins finally found her voice.

"Why, of course, young man, but that was then, and this is now. A little Christmas spirit doesn't harm anybody." Wisely, Harry nodded in agreement, and Madame Malkins was appeased enough to return to her fussing.

It took another hour and a half to escape from Madame Malkin's clutches. Once he saw what Mr. Hagrid had brought, Harry forgot all about his previous ire.

"An owl!" He scowled. This one looked way to similar to the other, extremely rude one that had knocked him over and was indirectly responsible for his punishment. "I can't believe you got an owl like that!"

Mr. Hagrid, obvious to Harry's unhappiness, grinned. "Aye, Harry, she be a beauty, eh?" As he set the silvery cage in front of him and waited, his smile dropped a bit and he shifted a bit on his feet. "She's all yours, Harry. D'ya like her?"

He nodded. What purpose did he have for an owl, anyways? It wasn't like his family would ever write.

"Well," Hagrid tried again. "You better name her, then. She's a good owl, and a strong one to boot."

The owl hooted and flapped her wings to demonstrate. She had to be at least two feet tall. Harry eyed her sharp talons warily and made a note to buy a stronger cage or something because the little shiny flimsy one rattled and shook in an effort to contain her.

"I'll name her later," he decided. "Can we go get the rest of the supplies now?"

Mr. Hagrid nodded and started off in the same direction a family of redheads were going. Trailing behind the burly man, Harry wondered how much baby owls sold for.

By this time, it was high noon, and Harry felt exhaustion settle into his limbs. The owl in the cage, no matter how pretty, was irritating and much too cumbersome to carry. Tall adults moved around him and Mr. Hagrid in blurs of brown and black and blue robes like they were rocks disrupting the unremitting flow of a stream. He felt sweaty, sick, and slightly claustrophobic. Mr. Hagrid had tried to keep Harry at his side, but he had quickly retreated to Mr. Hagrid's back after too much squeezing and knocking over. For the most part, he kept his head down and focused on counting the cobblestones beneath his feet while one sore arm kept the bird elevated and the other held tightly onto the back of Mr. Hagrid's robes. That was why, when Hagrid stopped abruptly, Harry rammed painfully forward, and the bird's cage clattered against the ground, eliciting an angry hoot.

"Ye okay, Harry?" Hagrid asked.

Harry pulled himself up and dusted his brand-new cloak off. "I'm fine," he answered. Looking up, he noticed that they were in front of another dusty little store, and asked "Where are we?" just as he read the sign displaying Flourish and Blotts.

"Flourish and Blotts. We'll be getting yeh books here."

"Ah, okay," he replied, before eagerly opening the doors and following Mr. Hagrid into the greatest place ever. It was much smaller than the library Aunt Petunia had taken him once to, but these were _magic_ books. He rushed over to the most secluded aisle at the end of the store with the stubborn goal of going through all the books before the day was done, and in his haste, bumped into a man who left the store before he could apologize.

His scar flared, but he didn't care very much right now.

His eyes scanned the rows upon rows of thick tomes. _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_, _How to Protect Yourself from Dark Creatures, What You Should Know about You-Know-Who, Defense Against the Dark Arts: An Introduction, The Danger of the Dark…_what were the dark arts? Turning to the two men browsing alongside him, he asked, "Excuse me, sirs, but what are the dark arts?"

Then, the strangest things happened. The brown-haired, middle aged man stuttered a bit, and then muttered something like "why, I'd never!" before giving Harry a dirty look and then leaving with _Defeat the Dark_ under his arm. The other man, with long pale blonde hair gelled back, looked coolly down upon him in a way that made his blood boil, and simply said, "an art one of your upbringing could never dream of exploring" and left as well.

Harry was disappointed. He had hoped that this magical world would be more exciting than the Dursleys, but, just like Madame Malkins, no one would answer his questions. Maybe he should ask Mr. Hagrid.

"Harry! Harry! There ye are!" Hagrid cried. "I been fearing ye got lost, ye see."

"Mr. Hagrid, I've got a question-"

"Not now, Harry, Headmaster Dumbledore and Neville Longbottom's here! Three cheers, what ye say?" He pointed out the two new arrivals, one an old man with ample white beard, and the other just as young as Harry. The little bookstore quickly became full of reporters and fawning fans. Harry saw the proprietor of the store give a little pleased look at his store's new popularity.

Harry assumed that the old man was the headmaster, and the younger boy was Neville. While the reports barraged them with questions, the young boy answered them with practiced, impassive ease. Harry was a bit scared by his dark eyes, the dark circles on his pale skin, and dark, wavy hair. Generally, his whole demeanor was dark.

Mr. Hagrid explained about the two in hushed whispers.

Albus Piercing-Something-Something Dumbledore was the headmaster of the school, and he was like the superhero of the wizarding society. And then there was Neville Longbottom, the Chosen One, who defeated You-Know-Who when he was just one-year-old.

Harry was surprised. A baby defeated someone? Harry couldn't even defeat Dudley in a scuffle, so what if he was inept?

"What's You-Know-Who's real name?" he asked, instead. He remembered seeing that name on one of the book covers.

Mr. Hagrid gained the same uncomfortable look Harry associated his tight-lipped attitude with his parents. He pushed some more.

"Alright," Mr. Hagrid told him, "I'll tell you. But you'd better not say him name out loud, you hear, its bad luck to do so." He shivered. "Lean over here, and I'll whisper it into your ear."

Harry did so, and he heard "Voldemort."

"Voldemort," he repeated, subconsciously, under his breath. He whipped his head around and was thankful that Mr. Hagrid hadn't heard him. He turned the word around in the head, trying to imagine why it would be so terrifying. Voldemort himself had to be one scary dude, he decided, to make everyone fear his name so.

Mr. Hagrid refused to answer any more of Harry's questions until he had gotten a chance to talk to Dumbledore. Harry decided that Dumbledore was a very nice man, and that Neville was quiet, contemplative, and wanted to be sorted in Gryffindor. After their awkward meeting, Harry finally was able to ask some of his more pressing questions.

"Was You-Know-Who a Slytherin?" Harry asked, as they browsed through the store.

Mr. Hagrid's eyes gained a protective look, and he nodded. "Aye, he was, and so was Malfoy, Nott, Lestrange, Rosier, and most of the Blacks. Best not to become close with them, Harry, they all come from Death Eater families, even though many aren't convinced, yet."

Harry seemed to mull this over, and then asked bravely, "My parents didn't die in a car crash, right?"

Mr. Hagrid was startled for a moment. "Who told you your parents died in a car crash?"

Then, Harry realized, with wonderful certainty, that he would probably never see his Uncle and Aunt and cousin ever again.

Mr. Hagrid was almost as angry as a raging Vernon after Harry had told him his story. He promised that Dumbledore would find a way to keep him away from his muggle relations, and he even offered Harry a spot in his home, adding if he would like to, of course, defensively. Harry had been uncertain at first, but he didn't want to disappoint someone who had helped him so.

Plus, Mr. Hagrid knew his parents.

As it turned out, Mr. Ollivander also knew his parents. And remembered his parent's wands, Hagrid's wand, and You-Know-Who's wand, although Harry wasn't too sure how he felt about that. When he first felt the wonderful wood, specifically tune to Harry's type of magic, he'd been brimming with hope and happiness and other positive feelings, so understandably, it felt quite like betrayal when he discovered his wand's unlikely link to You-Know-Who. Hagrid had horrified him with tales of You-Know-Who's crimes. However, clutching the holly-and-phoenix feather stick, he found that he could not hate it, but neither could he dredge up the unconditional love he had felt at first.

Hagrid noticed Harry's distress and spotted something that might help.

After a great deal of embarrassment on Harry's part, they were sitting in Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, enjoying some sorbet. Harry was still beet red, since he'd never thought that he'd ever deserve to eat ice cream, but, boy, was it delicious. Savoring the taste, he took miniscule bites as the sun went down.

Hagrid stood up, and Harry did shortly after. It was time to head to Hogwarts.

Clutching his owl and suitcase, now heavy with his supplies, Harry trekked alongside Hagrid until they reached the motorcycle. He stood watching the bustling lights of the muggle city and could hardly believe that he'd just discovered a whole hidden civilization that he belonged to. Settling into his seat, he let the cooling afternoon breeze wash over him as Hagrid took them to Hogwarts.

Even from far away, he could see the majesty of Hogwarts.

The grand castle of Hogwarts! Harry could hardly keep himself from gaping. All he could see was the magnificence of Hogwarts, and all that he could feel was elation at the thought that he, Harry Potter, would be able to attend!

So much better than Strummings.

As they passed by foliage and grass, Harry listened to Hagrid talk about the green eyes of Lily Potter and the pranks pulled by James Potter. They seemed to him like an enchanted couple who had a beautiful life before them until the Death Eaters had struck. What would his life have been if it weren't for the Death Eaters?

Hagrid lead him up the stone steps of Hogwarts. Harry had to tilt his up way up to see the end of the door, and the massive size of the castle was starting to give him vertigo.

"Well, watcha know, we're exactly on time for dinner."

"What?" Harry, still spellbound, asked, before with a thud, Hagrid forced open the grand entrance to Hogwarts School of Magic. The rabble and chatter of students streamed out, and then immediately ceased. Harry felt extremely out of place with so many pairs of eyes glued on to him, most with curiosity, some passive, and some with irritability. His stomach flopped, and he wished that Hagrid had made his introduction less grandiose.

"Welcome back, Hagrid," said a wizened old man with purple robes dotted with starts. He sat the center of the high table and, from behind his half-moon glasses, reminded Harry of Merlin in that old storybook about knights and dragons. He smiled kindly, and had a soft, but memorable voice. "I suppose this is our new student, Harry Potter?"

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Questions? Opinions? :)


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